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Arena league experience shaped Kurt Warner's NFL career

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Former Arizona Cardinals quarterback and soon-to-be-enshrined Hall of Famer Kurt Warner took a circuitous route to the NFL. He played arena football and in NFL Europe before getting a chance to start with the St. Louis Rams in 1999, leading them to a Super Bowl victory with one of the greatest offenses of all time.

Warner says the time in the Arena Football League prepared him to be the type of QB he became in the NFL.

“I got to grow up as a football player,” he said on a conference call this week for his Hall of Fame enshrinement. “I got a chance to experience and see so many different scenarios on the football field.”

It wasn’t just the scenarios he faced. It was also the type of football in the arena league that helped.

“The nature of the arena league, the speed of the game, the accuracy that needed to be developed, the way you needed to move within the pocket, the confines of what the field was like, I think all those things did nothing hone my skills and, as you would notice when I get to the NFL, those things that were so instrumental for me being successful in the arena league would also become my strengths on the big field at the NFL level.”

Arena football also shaped his approach as an offensive leader.

“The mentality with which you played the game at the quarterback position was so different in the arena league,” he said. “You knew you weren’t going to win games handing the ball off. You knew you weren’t going to win the game if you had to kick six or seven times like you do in the NFL.

“You were going to win the game by your quarterback making throw after throw, scoring touchdown after touchdown. Every time you stepped on the field it was like a two-minute drill, so that mentality that was developed in arena football on how to play the position, and how to stay aggressive and the expectation you set for yourself every time you touch the football was different. In the NFL you come in and punt four times and that’s a good day. For me, if I punted one time, I was disappointed.”

It is a big reason why he stepped in so ably in 1999 and had so much offensive success. The Arena League helped him lead the high-powered Greatest Show on Turf offense.

That mentality helped him lead the Cardinals to the Super Bowl as well when he was given the opportunity.

Arena football success has rarely led to success in the NFL, but for Warner, it was critical.

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